


home (the hardest place to stay, to leave)

by fallish



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, everyone lived through a WAR, they're a little messed up ok?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-11-23 08:32:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18149549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallish/pseuds/fallish
Summary: The story starts where Sora decides to start telling it.





	1. Chapter 1

Sora meets Riku when they were both too young to remember meeting. He thinks he was 4 and his mother had taken him out with her for errands. Endlessly curious and too lively for his mother to keep up, he had seen a boy who looked his age holding something shiny, and he had run up to him to ask what it was. Sora vaguely remembers telling Riku that it was pretty, Riku looking at him like he had another head, then thrusting out the chain saying he didn’t need it.

That’s not where the story starts.

They meet Kairi when Sora starts 2rd grade, and even though Riku is just a year above him, they don’t have play time together. She offers to play pirates with Sora, and he’s so elated, he talks Riku’s ear off about the girl who must be captain of the seas because she washed up on shore and clearly was meant to find her way to the islands. Riku smirks and says he just has to meet this elusive captain of the seas.

That’s not where it starts either.

A few months after meeting Riku, Riku meets Terra. He’s older and cool and a hero. Sora talks to Terra’s friend Aqua, and privately decides that Terra is a huge dork but maybe he _is_ cool. He also spends a lot of time with Riku, and Riku is Sora’s best friend so he can’t have him. Aqua laughs when he tells her that. She tells him that Terra won’t take Riku away from him, but she looks doubtful for a second. She asks him to promise to keep Riku safe. He does. She laughs and relaxes, at peace with that, but the promise settles under Sora’s skin. It feels permanent.

Sora knows Riku made Terra a promise too, but he doesn’t know what it was. All he does know is that they were too young to know what they had promised. They were too small to know the pain and time a few chance meetings would cost them. 

It kind of does start there, doesn’t it?

But maybe it doesn’t really start until they have the raft mostly put together. They are too old to think leaving the island with nothing but a raft is a good idea but too young and full of wanderlust to really consider if what little they’d gathered was enough. He goes home that night and thinks about the new room he’s staying in, full of things he doesn’t need. He thinks about his mother. He thinks about his aunt in the next room over. When the storm starts, he doesn’t think twice about finding Riku.

The story can’t start there.

They are too fragile to make it on their own.

The story won’t start there.

They are surrounded by darkness.

There is too much story there.

For the first time, Sora feels the promise swelling up under his skin.

Pause.

The story starts where Sora decides to start telling it.

***

The beach is such an odd place to be now that there’s nothing holding them apart anymore. Kairi sits on the bent paupu tree and Riku leans against it to get the best view of the sunset possible. Sora stretches himself out so that his head rests in Kairi’s lap and his knee is pressed firmly into Riku’s shoulder, just enough so that he can feel that he’s there. Turning his head toward the sunset, he can see the sea salt gang playing frisbee in the fading light.

There’s no nostalgia, but a certain fondness in his voice when he says “I’m glad we’re all here. I’m glad I can see you guys again.” Both of them are quiet for the next few seconds, but he knows that nothing needs to be said here. Kairi huffs out a breathe, then threads her fingers through his hair. She places a small kiss on his forehead. Riku reaches out his right hand and twines Sora’s fingers through his and squeezes. They say a lot in those small actions. They say, _me too_ and _I’m not leaving_. Sora feels his heartbeat settle and his eyes start to droop.

Kairi and Riku notice he’s nodding off, but they let it happen. They can hold him up

***

The first time he sees his old bed, Sora is convinced he is gonna pass out within seconds of his head hitting the pillow. Unfortunately, that turns out to not be the case. What does happen is what follows:

He lays down, and he shuts his eyes. The air sits still and silent and there is no sound but a distant echo of waves crashing on cool sand coming from his cracked window. Trying to ignore the need to reach for his phone and check on Donald and Goofy, he shifts restlessly, straining to hear anything else at all. The only other discernible sounds are those of his aunt bustling around in the kitchen, and looking at the clock, if her routine hadn’t changed while he was gone, she wouldn’t be done for a few hours. 

The bed doesn’t rock under him at all when he stands up. He willfully doesn’t think about the constant turbulence of the gummi ship as he pushes the window fully open slowly, careful to not make any sound.

The light of the moon aides him in sneaking one foot after another over the hurdle height ledge of his window. Making his way past the kitchen window, which is wide open, he hears his aunt on the phone, “No, I just want to make sure I can make this place a little more like home for him. He has never really lived here before, I mean, I don’t even know if he ever had his own room after he left,” 

Sora knew that coming back was a serious decision, but hearing the consequences of it makes him feel guilty for jumping back into her life like this. When they decided they wanted to leave, it was a decision made in loneliness and a little bit of anger, but back then, he never considered what it would do to her. Her sister gone a month prior, and then her nephew gone in the middle of the night. He wonders briefly if she suffered the same loneliness he felt after his mother passed. He can’t stay for longer.

He sneaks past the open window to the sidewalk and makes the familiar walk to Riku’s house. It’s no surprise, when he reaches, that Riku’s bedroom light is still on. 

At Yen Sid’s, Riku used to open enemy files and write in his own descriptions in the middle of the night and hope Yen Sid wouldn’t notice. While they slept in the same room, Sora had watched him do it enough times to know he always fell asleep around his third edit of the night. He is certain that he made his own files so that he could continue the trend after becoming a master. He can’t help but adore the fact that Riku still keeps up with the little things they used to keep themselves sane through the countless training trial they fought through. Sora used to make small bead bracelets, each marking a new world and the people he met there. His new blue bracelet has the colors of the sea and he got the beads from Arendelle. Its fastened with a little snowflake charm that Elsa made him. Now, he fiddles with it while coming up with an entrance strategy now that there is no coconut tree outside Riku’s window.

After scaling the building and prying the window open, he allows himself to tumble heavily onto his best friend’s floor. The bed pushed into the corner of the room is far enough from the window that his fall doesn’t even make Riku stir, but its still loud enough to make Sora wince.

Sure enough, the notebook full of carefully documented heartless sits under Riku’s right hand, as he lies asleep, curled up with his left arm folded under his head. While Sora is practically known for being able to sleep anywhere, Riku can’t sleep without reading or writing something for a solid hour. Sora knows Mickey didn’t fare well with the constant selfie updates he used to send Riku in the Realm of Darkness. He’d received a few disparaging texts from the king asking him to keep it short so that when they could sleep, he didn’t have to worry about the light of the screen a few feet away being the eyes of a shadow. Riku always texted him almost immediately after those messages, telling him not to listen to anything the king said, and to keep sending updates. He used to say it made him feel better to know he was okay.

Sora could get with the philosophy of knowing if his best friend was safe. That was why he was currently standing in Riku’s bedroom, exhausted, with no plan of what to do once he got there. Now that he thought about it, he had only wanted to get away from the dense atmosphere of his own room. He and Riku had grown up in this room together, almost. Remnants of their childhood remained in the wooden swords that were shoved into a corner, and the several little pieces of their play island make believe props strewn about. 

Sora picks up an eyepatch and thinks of Will and Jack and the Caribbean. The memories flash through his head almost too fast to keep track of and all of a sudden, Rudder of Fate is in his hand. While the ache of loss is better felt by Elizabeth, he still feels a pang in his chest whenever he thinks of them. He sigh and keeps out his keyblade, switching to the Kingdom Key as he sits on the floor, near the foot of Riku’s bed. If he can’t sleep, then the least he could do it make sure Riku is safe while he does.

***

Riku wakes up slowly, a trend that has been going on since they had come back to the islands. With his eyes closed, he moves each of his limbs, one at a time, only to confirm what he already knew, which was that he was still exhausted. After the war was over, he had asked Mickey why he was so tired all the time, and they had settled on the conclusion that was the absence of stress. After being under so much pressure for so long, it was normal for even masters to need time to settle back to a baseline level of stress.

When he stretched out his right leg straight, he his a soft spike and he nearly jumped out of his skin, his eyes shot open so fast. “S’ra,” he managed to croak out before scrambling up, “What’re you _doing_ here?” After assessing the actual situation, he asked “More importantly, why’re you down there?”

Sora, who had sprung up when Riku had called his name, looked dazed. “What?” he asked. He couldn’t remember falling asleep, but now that he was awake his quickly vanished his keyblade and rubbed at his eyes. “I’ve been here forever. For eons, in fact,” and at Riku’s raised eyebrow, he stared down at his hands trying to wake up as he expanded, “Couldn’t sleep. Don’t worry about it.” When he looked up to see his eyebrow still raised, he just made an exasperated sound and started to get up.

Finally, Riku nods, “While I happen to know that you are pretty good at sleeping, I guess I get it. You should’ve woken me up though.” Riku moves through his regular morning routine of swinging his legs down and making the bed behind him. Sora simply lays down on the floor and waits for him to go through the motions of his morning. As Riku finishes, he looks down at the boy on the floor. His eyes are closed and he looks like he hasn’t really slept. “Wanna take a nap?”

Sora looks guiltily at the clock and grimaces. “Even if we could, I don’t think that’s a great idea. We’re gonna be late for brunch.” 

“After then?” Riku asks, forcing his tone to remain as casual as possible. Sora squints suspiciously.

“Sure…”

And Riku smirks at his victory, “Then you’ll come back here with me after, and we’ll both get a well deserved nap.” He says it with such finality that Sora rolls his eyes. They have to meet up for brunch with Kairi, and if they don’t leave in the next ten minutes, she’s going to have their hides. “C’mon let’s go.” 

And just like that, its on to brunch.


	2. Chapter 2

Brunch is about what Sora expected it to be. He eats like he’s still living his life on the run and laughs when Kairi makes a disgusted noise and Riku just wrinkles his nose. They share stories of their week and Kairi talks about getting the sea salt gang to the islands again.

“C’mon. You’re taking a nap, at least,” Riku says when they get back to his house, “I don’t know how long you slept, but I fell asleep around one, so I know it wasn’t long enough.”

Sora, like always, doesn’t listen. “I’ll lie in bed, and like, watch you play something, but I don’t know about going to sleep,” he says, climbing into Riku’s bed. 

Riku sits on the floor next to him and loads an old movie that Sora knows they’ve both seen a thousand times. “C’mon. I know you won’t stay awake long for this. Besides,” his tone softens as he summons his keyblade, “You had watch last night. I’ll keep watch now.” He leans his head back to rest on the bed. 

“You don’t have to-” he hesitates.

“Sora,” Riku reaches a flailing hand back to rest it on his face, “if your eyes aren’t closed in the next ten seconds, I’m gonna come up there and close them for you.” And Sora has no choice but to laugh quietly and close them. He reaches up and holds Riku’s hand in his, making him turn around.

“Thanks Riku.” 

***

He wakes up with his breathe caught in his throat and the shimmers of his keyblade materializing in his hand. Distantly he can hear Riku’s voice calling his name, but it doesn’t really register until he is already standing. Muffled, but still audible, he hears ' _Sora, stop_ ', and he’s back in Riku’s room and Riku is clutching his wrist.

“You were going to hurt yourself. I didn’t know you could do that in your sleep,” Riku stares at him, vaguely gesturing to the key in his hand. “How did you do that?”

It takes Sora a solid minute to process being awake. It takes him another to try to figure out what Riku was even talking about. When he finally does, he vanishes the blade. “I don’t know, it’s just some kind of bad dream.”

At Riku’s head shooting up, suddenly tense, he adds, “Not the dangerous kind, don’t worry too much.” His friend still looks like he wants to say something but Sora continues, “ I’m just not sleeping well, it’s fine. Its just an adjustment period. To being back. Really,” He stretches and yawns, “So, what now?”

Riku doesn't press, just like Sora knew he wouldn't, and they move on.

***

This time, its Kairi who finds him, all curled up in her giant beanbag couch. She wakes up slowly, noting the cold draft coming from her open window, then sitting up all at once. The window wasn’t open when she fell asleep. Blearily rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with the heels of her hands, she looks around her room only to see Sora, asleep, sitting almost upright, with his hand loosely wrapped around the handle of his keyblade, which rests against his right leg.

“Sora,” she calls out. As much as she wanted to start the morning calmly, there is clearly no hope at this point. Though it’s barely touching six and the sun is just about half risen, there’s no chance she’s going back to sleep now. Her heart is still recovering from the shock of cold air from her still open window, and the bozo who caused this isn’t even budging. She rolls her eyes. “Sora!”

To nobody’s surprise, he jolts up, simultaneously losing his balance on the beanbag and attempting to tighten his grip on the keyblade in his hand, hissing as his grip shifts just so that the blade nicks his leg in the struggle. In the moment of processing the pain, he seems to realize where he is.

“Hello, good morning, nice to see you,” Kairi dryly starts, “all good ways of starting a conversation. However, I’m going to have to ask what you’re doing here to start off. Maybe you can even tell me why you have your keyblade out,” She’s not going to laugh at the comical noise he makes as stretches. She knows how bad that stupid beanbag is on your back. She’s slept in it too many times not to know. 

He looks warily towards the foot of her bed. “I couldn’t sleep,” he pauses, “again.”

“Sora, look at me,” she’s just frustrated now, “this is the third day in a row you haven’t slept at home. Maybe we should talk about this?” 

Coming home has clearly been the hardest on him. Kairi had spent most of her time on the islands while he and Riku were out adventuring and training. She’d missed months on the islands compared to their years gone, and she was starting to see the effects of those missions more noticeably now. While Riku had been more complacent in assimilating to school and island life, he had put a distance between himself and the other island kids their age. If he talked, he talked to her and Sora. Sora actively tries to fit in the way he did before he ever left, but he acts so different. She wonders what the island kids make of the way they act now. 

Its so strange to compare Riku and Sora to the kids they used to be, its almost awkward to see the way the island kids freeze when Sora forgets himself. He’s still so energetic and hyper, but sometimes, his magic dances near his fingertips or his feet cling to surfaces they shouldn’t be able to. He always tries to cover the way his smile wavers, but Kairi never misses it. She wants to interfere, but she doesn’t want to drive away the other kids, who had never even left the islands, who didn't know any better. Instead, she giggles when he lets himself slip up a little more in front of her and Riku, when they sneak away, alone on the play island. 

Even with trying to keep his energy happy and positive, the bags under his eyes are telling. 

“I’m sleepwalking! It’s fine,” he sounds desperate, “I keep ending up with you and Riku so its not like I’m in any danger. You guys are safe.” And maybe he’s starting to look a little more miserable as every day passes. She’s, like, 90% sure that he has been consciously walking here or to Riku’s place on the nights he can’t sleep, but she doesn’t want to call him out on it yet. She sighs.

“Does your aunt know where you are? At least?” The guilty look on his face says everything. “Okay, here’s the plan. I’m going to lay in bed for at least ten more minutes, and after that, we are going to go back to your place. We should see if we can do something about your room, make it more comfortable for you. It might help. If nothing else, we should tell your aunt you’re not dead.” She tries to take a deep, calming breathe, pinching the bridge of her nose and flops back into a horizontal position. 

It’s too early for coherent thought.

***

By the time Kairi is up and ready to leave the house, its mid-morning. Sora glances at the clock and confirms its late enough that the house would probably be empty when they got there. His aunt leaves for work at eight thirty, and it was already nine when they left.

A knock on the front door confirms that nobody is home, but it also confirms that no one can let them in. “Keys?” Kairi sounds like she doesn’t have much faith that Sora actually thought to bring keys. Well, she’s right, but Sora doesn’t want her to sound any more disappointed than she already is, so he holds up a finger.

Rounding the house, he sees that the window is cracked open with a small stone jammed into the bottom left corner. “Over here! We can get in through the window,” he’s pushing up the window further up, glancing up, to see Kairi standing with her arms crossed, raising an eyebrow. “Or, I can go through the window and open the front door for you.” he amends.

Clearing the small ledge of his window, he hears her mutter, “Correct,” and it makes him laugh. Some things never change. When they were little and still needed permission to go to the play island, she never was willing to jump out from her window. He and Riku would always try to convince her that they would catch her, but she always snuck out through the front door, while they waited with baited breathe, wondering if she would get caught this time. 

Wincing at the mess in his room, he makes his way out to the front door. He unlocks it and takes a small breathe before opening it. Kairi always entered other people’s houses like she owned the place, especially his and Riku’s houses, and this time is no different. Sora lets her voice wash over him as she walk in and goes directly to the kitchen. She starts talking about the color theory of his room and the halls leading there, all while pulling out a pan from under the stove and starting a burner with the light hung on the wall.

He listens to her while he starts putting the dishes from the dishwasher away. The sound of her voice is washing away the awkward conversation from dinner the night before that stained the kitchen, and it helps him breathe. She cracks and egg into the pan and the crackle overtakes her voice briefly. For a second, he feels like he really might be home.

Setting down a plate, he sees some papers on the kitchen table that weren’t there the night before. It’s a brochure for helping kids with PTSD, and the air immediately leaves his lungs. The calm feeling from just a moment prior seems like it must have happened ages ago. There is a post-it on the back that reads ‘ _give him space_ ’ in all caps.

“Kairi, we need to go,” he swallows. He had been so careful, smiling and laughing, acting like he used to be before he left. He was fine. He barely remembers the blur of the war. He doesn’t even think about it all that often. But this brochure, this _thing_ , in his hand proved that maybe he wasn’t as convincing as he thought he was. 

He wonders if she heard him wake up, quietly but anxiously, pulling cold metal into his hand and clutching it to his chest before sneaking out the window. Maybe she had noticed the way that he was never home when she left the house for work. 

Maybe she wondered whether or not he was running away again. 

The king had given them the go ahead to return to the islands and spoke to each of their families when they returned. She probably knew about everything that happened that kept him away. But, then again, maybe she didn’t. Distantly, he heard Kairi talking about how she already had some ideas for paint, but he couldn’t focus on her voice anymore. 

“No, I meant we need to get off the islands. I think I’m going stir crazy,” He sounded a little rough even to his own ears, so he clears his throat. “Besides, it might be nice to go see the others.” That sounded a little better, but from the way Kairi was narrowing her eyes said he wasn’t completely off her radar just yet.

“I have been meaning to go see Merlin at some point,” she says slowly, keeping her eyes locked on the frying egg she now has in front of her, “to work on my magic a little.” Motioning for a plate, she still keeps her eyes on the stove. She transfers the egg to the plate, and turns around, finally making eye contact. “Y’know, if you need an excuse.”

And he hates that she knows him so well, and loves her all in the same instant. His face must show something of the way he’s feeling because her face softens. 

“Sora, why are you avoiding your aunt? You seemed to be happy about coming home when we left the tower,” she asks. He tries to come up with something that makes sense, but all he can think about is the fact that he never though coming home would be so hard. 

The truth is he only spent the better part of a month with his aunt before leaving to follow Riku. He doesn’t know her the way his mom did. He remembers all the times the three of them went to the house he now lives in and the way his mother laughed with a teacup in her hand. He remembers telling her all about the adventure he had in the garden. His aunt’s face blurs in the memory. 

He thinks about the kids he used to race and spar with. They all seemed so uncomfortable around him now, even if they tried to cover it up, but it was obvious the way their eyes skipped him in school and the way they didn’t ask him and Riku to join them when they hung out. 

“I love the islands. I just…” he’s not great at articulating himself, and he has always hated the way he sounds trying to explain himself, “this place isn’t as easy to be as it used to be. I’ve been to so many worlds, and nobody there compares me to a version of me they thought they knew. I didn’t mean to, but somewhere along the way, I changed! I couldn’t help it. You told me not to, I remember that, but I went and did it anyway, and now everyone can’t seem to wrap their heads around it. Around me. I’ve spent so long being just me. I didn’t think about what it would be like to be here.” 

He tried so hard not to let on that he’d noticed the way everyone here treated him and Riku, and Kairi too, when she went places with them, but it was too easy to let it flood out once he started. 

He sighs and rubs his face with the hand not holding the pamphlet. “Maybe I’m just a people person who doesn’t have many people right now.”

Kairi finishes her food and puts her plate in the sink. “I’ll send out some texts. Mickey can bring Donald and Goofy to Radiant Gardens. Riku can have the gummi ship up and running before the end of the week, probably faster if I tell him to hurry. Leon will give us a place to stay, and I’m pretty sure I can tell your aunt for you,” she’s so nonchalant and casual with her tone, already typing the plan into her phone. She leans forward so her elbows rest on the counter, “Until then, we can get some of the others here faster than we can go there.”

She’s still clicking away at texts when Sora finds the words to respond. “Thank you for doing this. I know I should be happier to be home. And also for offering to tell her.” He smiles weakly, “It was nice to think about, but I think I should talk to her.” 

The tapping stops. “I’m proud of you. I know you spent a lot of time, just not thinking about all this, but I’m glad you want to talk to her. From what I know, she really is trying to make adjusting as easy as possible,” she says. Glancing at her phone, she adds, “The twilight town gang will be here tomorrow. Let’s see if we can get some stuff together for them.”

Maybe a beach day would be nice.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at fallish


End file.
